


The Doctor: out of time

by Heliopause



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode s06e10, Fix-It, Gen, Older Woman, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heliopause/pseuds/Heliopause
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How it should have ended: Season Six, Episode Ten, The Girl Who Waited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Doctor: out of time

The Doctor was calm, and very clear. 

"I'm sorry, Rory, but there can only be one Amy in the TARDIS, not two. Which one do you want? It's your choice."

But the Doctor had already helped to carry Rory's own Amy in, had already shut out that other Amy, Rory thought, feebly. He had already _made_ the choice.

"It isn't fair..." he faltered.

"Your choice," the Doctor repeated, and walked away.

"Doctor? Doctor?" came from that other Amy, the one outside, the older one, the one who had fought for her life for thirty-six years, waiting for rescue.

"Doctor...?"

Silence. She knew really, Rory thought. She must have heard. _There can't be two Amys in the TARDIS,_ the Doctor had said. _The paradox is too massive._ She must know. He squeezed his eyes shut against the knowledge of her knowledge of betrayal.

Then, from silence, a trembling voice. 

"Rory... I love you. Tell her..." and the voice broke, "Tell Amy, _your_ Amy, I'm giving her the days. The days with you. The days to come."

Rory leaned against the door which shut her out, that other Amy, that older Amy, whose entry into the TARDIS would mean the end of _his_ Amy's life. 

"I'm so, so sorry," he managed.

And the words... _those_ words. Until then she hadn't known, hadn't been certain, what she would do, but now... It was Rory's voice, but the words were ones she knew well. She paused one breathless instant, then snatched up again the staff and sword she had thrown away when safety had seemed to open up in front of her.

She placed one slender - still slender! had _that_ counted for nothing? - hand against the glass of the Police box, and said, chokingly, "The days I can't have. Take them, please. Don't let me in. The days are for you , and for her... But let me see her, one last look at you and at her... Rory?"

He stood rigid against the door. The pity of it, the pity of her thirty-six years, and now...

"To look one last time, Rory... it's all right, I have my _own_ Rory here," He heard her laugh, or maybe sob. He couldn't tell. "I'm giving you my days..."

Just to look. Just to look. A rush of pity overwhelmed him. 

And he heard the Doctor's angry shout but he had turned the latch and the door burst open onto him and he fell back sprawling and she had leapt across the room and lunged at that younger unconscious self and grabbed her up and thrown her out, to face the Kindness. 

And whirled, and kicked at Rory, still stumbled on the floor, one savage kick to the neck, which left him gasping, and numbed, unable to move, then left him without another look.

"And you... and _you_ , Doctor..." she was on him, with the staff and the sword, knocking his own sonic screwdriver out of his hand, and savagely stabbing at him. "I have had thirty-six years to learn how to hate the man who is _so sorry_."

He dodges, feints, tries to keep the console between them, but she has had long training in this, fighting in close quarters, while he... he can run down long corridors well enough. She corners him quickly, and laughs. 

Even then he doesn't understand, and tries in rapid succession, an appealing smile, a quirky browlift, a boyish brushing back of his hair. She pauses for just a moment, intrigued and amused, and then twice, stab- _stab!_ to the heart and to the heart, and he is bleeding like a stuck pig, and sagging against the console and... very surprised. 

"Is thirty-six years too many to make a woman of any value, Doctor?" she hisses. "Then how _much too many_ is nine hundred? Out of time, Doctor!" And grabs the reeling, bleeding body and slings it out the door, where her younger self is panicking, looking desperately to and fro, between the TARDIS and two approaching handbots.

And... not pity, but a sympathetic smile, for that younger Amy. 

"It's not too bad!" she calls to her self. "You'll get along! The interface will tell you all you need to know - except how to escape, of course. And I have made quite a cosy nest there inside the Temporal Engines." She bends and tugs at Rory's body; he is beginning to stir again. "He'll show you where! You and he can grow old together. And that thing, too, if it regenerates again."

And that is that. She slams the door. 

It will take a while, she knows, but she is the woman who hacked the Interface, the woman who reprogrammed it, the woman who built her own sonic screwdriver from scratch. She survived thirty-six years of pitiless hunting, and she will figure out the TARDIS. She will find her own way now.

And in the meantime, oh yes! _yes!_ In the meantime she is perfectly safe for the first time in thirty-six years. 

She breathes in that thought for a long time, long enough for her racing heart to slow, and her trembling to stop - for after all, she had loved all of them, in a way. She feels for them, out there.

And then she smiles - oh, a smile of pure _bliss!_ \- and heads to the swimming pool.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, well... my second, and I suspect last ever, Doctor Who story. I have only just seen the episode entitled "The Girl Who Waited", and...you can tell what I thought of it.  
> And okay, there's another possible ending, fitting all the rules, saving all of them, but I am so fed up with SMoffat's recurrent sexism that I am getting rid of his self-insert here and now. Out of time, Doctor!  
> Some of this dialogue is taken from the transcript of the Procrastinator, jpgr on LiveJournal, who posted at http://jpgr.livejournal.com/127700.html, and to whom, thanks.


End file.
